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Red Currant and Raspberry Tart
Pick and wash one pound of red currants, remove the stalks from a quarter of a pound of raspberries, and put the fruit with four ounces of sugar into a pie-dish, mixing them well, and building them into a cone shape. Add a table-spoonful of water. Make a crust as directed in CRUST FOR FRUIT TARTS, roll it out, cut a strip an inch wide, and lay this round the dish; roll out the cover, put it on, and ornament the edges neatly. Bake in a moderate oven, covering the top with a buttered paper if it seems inclined to take too much colour. When cooked, sift a little sugar over the top, and send cream and sifted sugar to the table with it. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A plain English fruit tart of the covered pie-dish sort, where the pastry sits over a mound of raw fruit and no bottom crust is used. Two details carry it: the cone of fruit and the strip of pastry round the rim.
- The cone of fruitPiling the fruit high in the centre keeps the pastry lid from sagging onto the juice as the fruit collapses. Use a deep pie-dish of about 1 to 1.5 pints and heap the middle well above the rim line.
- The pastry rim stripThe inch-wide strip laid round the edge of the dish gives the lid something to grip (in practice the rim is usually dampened first, though the recipe does not say so). Without it the lid has little purchase and is more likely to shrink inward and let juice escape.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F/180C by modern reckoning. If the top browns before the fruit softens, cover it with buttered parchment as directed, or foil.
- Quantities1 lb red currants, 4 oz raspberries, 4 oz sugar. Currants are sharp, so 4 oz is on the modest side by modern taste; up to 6 oz is defensible if your fruit is very tart.
- Only a spoonful of waterCurrants and raspberries release a great deal of juice. Adding more liquid gives you a soupy filling and a soggy lid.
- CrustThe cross-reference is to the book's separate entry for crust for fruit tarts, which is not reproduced here. A standard shortcrust made with about 8 oz flour will cover the lid plus the rim strip.
- Timing and yieldThe original gives none. Reckon 35 to 45 minutes, until the crust is set and pale gold and juice bubbles at the vents. Serves four to six.
- Vent the lidCutting a small slit or two in the cover lets steam escape; the recipe does not mention it, but trapped steam can lift the pastry off the fruit.
- Cost note"Probable cost, 1s. 6d." is late-Victorian retail pricing, included so a housekeeper could budget; it has no bearing on the method.
Red currants and raspberries ripen together in British gardens in high summer, and the pairing in this book reflects kitchen-garden supply rather than any invented flavour theory: the currants bring acid and pectin, the raspberries perfume and sweetness. The form here is the old English covered fruit tart, which to a Victorian cook meant a pie-dish of raw fruit under a single lid of pastry, no base and no tin, and it is why the recipe fusses over the strip of paste laid round the rim, the standard trick for anchoring a lid to a china dish. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, generally dated to the later nineteenth century, was arranged alphabetically as a reference work for middle-class households, which accounts for the cross-reference to a separate crust entry and the estimated cost that appears to have been appended to many of the dishes.